Author

Tags

Share article

According to mno.hu, Dénes Peták’s Time Warp entry was covered at the ARC poster exhibition at 56-osok Square after the author of the original photo, Éva Kapitány asked the organisers to do so. The original photo features the university student Viktor Orbán pushed to a police car with a truncheon at the Batthyány Eternal Flame in 1988, on the 30th anniversary of Imre Nagy’s execution. Peták reworked the photo and switched the policemen’s faces to the current photos of the prime minister.

What bothered Éva Kapitány, the taker of the original photo, was that the creator of the montage didn’t ask for her permission. However, she wouldn’t have given permission even if it was asked beforehand. “There are certain photos, out of which I wouldn’t make fun” she said, but also added that she found it hurtful that several sites claimed that she tried to protect the prime minister with her decision.

She recalled that the photo was taken from the apartment of Gáspár Miklós Tamás, who was also taken away by policemen along with other oppositionists like Orbán. The photographer was asked several times to lend some of her photos for certain occasions but she always said no as she doesn’t want them to be used for political messages.

Dénes Peták said that he had found the photo on 22 different online portals which didn’t list the name of the photographer, so he had no idea who to turn to.

“I thought that this was such an iconic photo that could be presented in a reconceptualised form at an exhibition like this” said Dénes.

But Éva insisted that he should’ve turned to the Association of Hungarian Journalists to find out the necessary information.

The FB page of the ARC exhibition announced last Sunday that they had to cover and “over-glue” the poster at the request of the photographer. Gábor Bakos, one of the founders of ARC said that even though they believe that these kind of reconceptualizations are perfectly fine, they had to keep to the law.

So the poster was covered on Monday and the sheet was cut out at the two new Orbán faces that replaced the policemen. Bakos added that this also helped the poster to get greater publicity. The photographer said that she didn’t think about this, she just didn’t want to see her work in a reconceptualised form.